Authoritarian neoliberalism: trajectories of knowledge production and praxis

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue takes as its point of departure three centres of gravity that have shaped the study of neoliberalism but have also established barriers to further progress in these debates. By promoting an intersectional materialist research agenda which challenges extant ideational, modernist and empiricist tendencies in scholarship on neoliberalism, the essay contextualizes the special issue articles by outlining and clarifying key aspects of our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism. In particular, we reflect on themes related to conceptualization and periodization, which are of importance for both this special issue but also for broader questions of knowledge production and praxis. Through doing so, we argue that there are two distinct yet connected trajectories within the research agenda on authoritarian neoliberalism: one which focuses on the intertwinement of authoritarian statisms and neoliberal reforms; and another which traces various lineages of transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces). Recognition of this spectrum of authoritarian neoliberal practices is important as it helps us uncover how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible. Nevertheless, it is affirmed that we must remain open to what an emancipatory society might look like, and what struggles would be most appropriate, in and across various socio-spatial contexts.

COVID-19, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and Precarious Migrant Work in Singapore: Structural Violence and Communicative Inequality

“…Similarly, civil society organizations that have publicly interrogated state policies related to migration face a wide range of challenges amidst their COVID-19 responses. The authoritarian impulse of extreme neoliberalism seeds and circulates the rhetoric of the "anti-national" to suppress dissenting voices, thus legitimizing techniques of disciplining as necessary responses of good governance (Bruff and Tansel, 2019). Extreme neoliberalism sustains the free market ideology as an organizing framework even as its narrative has been thoroughly disrupted by the everyday empirical accounts of those struggling with its violent effects at the margins.…”

“…The state's expenditures on healthcare and social services are among the lowest in developed economies globally (Rahim and Barr, 2019). capital accumulation (Tansel, 2017;Bruff and Tansel, 2019). Singapore's "smart" governance assembles a collection of laws, surveillance technologies, controls over institutions and civil society, and police interventions aimed at repression while simultaneously "rolling back" the welfare-based role of the state.…”

Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Radical Conservatism and Social Policy within the European Union: Croatia, Hungary and Poland

“…What unites the ruling parties in all three of our case study countries is their seemingly strong grip on power through a combination of welfare chauvinism, layered social welfare and nationalist populism, rather than their embracing of authoritarian neoliberalism per se. At the same time, Bruff and Tansel (: 234) have argued recently that ‘authoritarian neoliberalism is … a crisis‐ridden, contradictory set of practices which enhance the capacities for resistance as well as domination’. Although the inevitability of ‘capacities for resistance’ may be questionable, in our case study countries, recent restructurings have served to widen the political space, opening it up to new movements, whether on the left or right, or, as increasingly occurs, a hybrid of each combined with a kind of new performative political populism with parties emerging that are impossible to classify on left/right terms but which are discursively ‘anti‐elitist’ and ‘anti‐establishment’.…”

“…It is precisely the contours of 'the particular gendered, racialized and localized effects of authoritarian neoliberalism' (Tansel, 2017: 18) that need to be traced, and, above all, their connections to forms of indebtedness, financialization and capital accumulation. The ways in which the state not only forms but also transforms urban and rural spaces, households, workplaces and the like (Bruff and Tansel, 2019), and the ways in which 'public' and 'private' are redefined, need to be explored. In all of these restructurings, new kinds of refusal and resistance are emerging, rarely led by mainstream political parties nor the deeply compromised 'liberal' NGOs formed in the immediate post-socialist period.…”

The Question of Tactics in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

“…15 As Bruff and Tansel express it, the point is less to prescribe an ideal range of tactics, and more that we must learn to take into account a "broader range of resistances," from the struggles of indigenous peoples, to those who seek refuge from gender or citizenship-based discrimination, to those who seek to defend "black lives" from militarized policing. 16 Critically, say Bieler and Morton, we must not lose hope. Around the world, we can observe on the margins of our globalized and economically-rationalized lives the signs of an emerging network of consensus-based, horizontalist cooperatives, and activist groups which functions, first of all, to prefigure a more democratic future and, secondly, to reappropriate new public spaces from the clutches of authoritarian austerity.…”